View full sizeDoug Beghtel/The OregonianMembers of the Milwaukie High School class of 1990 gather for a casual evening at Macadam's Bar & Grill in Southwest Portland as part of their 20th reunion. A survey of the class five years out of high school in 1995 showed that most had yet to find their footing in life and were still scrambling to complete college or find a stable job.

Fifteen years ago, the American dream looked like a long shot for Milwaukie High School's class of 1990, when five years out of high school most members still faced uncertain job prospects and a shapeless future.

But at least some of those who showed up for the class's 20th reunion in Portland last weekend proved that persistence and hard work still deliver a home, family and middle-class life, even when the odds seemed stacked against them.

In 1995, Milwaukie High graduate Mercedes Cochran Cook, already married with two children, seemed mired too deep in obligations to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Classmate Stacey Baker seemed to have squandered her college degree on a receptionist job for a shoe company, and Jonathan Heiden was scrambling from job to job as he tried to support his wife and daughter.

Today, Cochran Cook is a professional actress, Baker has traveled around the world outfitting athletes for the Olympics, and Heiden has a stable job driving a garbage truck, earning enough to support his family and buy a home.

"I figured out how to make a living doing what I love in Oregon," says Cochran Cook. "I'm pretty proud of that."

A team of Oregonian reporters in 1995 set out to track down graduates of Milwaukie High's class of 1990 to see how well a typical Oregon high school prepared young people for their next stage in life, whether work or college. The team chose Milwaukie because it was, in almost every way, average for the state, including demographics and size.

Reporters interviewed 132 of the graduates, a little fewer than half. Five years after earning their diploma, most were single, renting an apartment and, if working full time, earning about $19,000 a year. Twelve owned homes, a third had married, and 27 had children. About 29 percent were still living with their parents, and 23, or about 18 percent, had earned a four-year college degree.

Five years later, in 2000, The Oregonian surveyed 54 Milwaukie class members who attended their 10-year reunion. Though not a scientific or representative sample, the survey showed that at least a majority of that group had built stable middle-class lives during a time when the economy was booming.

Two-thirds were earning more than $31,000 a year, and one in five more than $45,000. Three out of four were married, and more than two-thirds had children and were buying a home.

A week ago, about 100 of the 38-year-old Milwaukie alums gathered Friday and Saturday for their 20th reunion. Some of them met Friday at Macadam's Bar & Grill in Southwest Portland. Dressed casually in jeans, shorts, halter tops and polo shirts, they knocked back drinks and shared photographs of their children, some of whom are now in high school.

Doug Beghtel/The OregonianMercedes Cochran Cook was already married with two children when The Oregonian first interviewed her five years after graduation. Her aspiration to become an actress seemed then like a pipe dream, but today she earns a living as a professional actress, even as she and her husband raise three children.

The young adults are part of Generation X, a group that grew up with high divorce rates and Reagan-era materialism and came of age along with the personal computer. Some in that generation made fortunes in the high-tech boom during the Clinton years, and some went bust when the tech bubble burst.

Passion for acting

Mercedes Cochran Cook told the Oregonian in 1995 that it was important for her to marry early. "I wanted to get married and stay married because my parents were divorced," she said.

But she didn't let her marriage and children block her quest to become an actress. She embodies the class of 1990 motto: "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it."

Today, she uses the stage name Mercedes Rose to earn a living acting in television, in commercial and training films, and in doing voiceover for video games, such as Princess Rosalina for Super Mario Galaxy.

She works out of her Carlton home, as does her husband, Jeremiah Cook, a massage therapist. They are raising three children and celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary a week ago.

"I couldn't be happier," she says. "I've worked really hard to get here and feel like I've earned it."

Chasing sports apparel

Five years after leaving Milwaukie High, Stacey Baker wasn't sure what she wanted. She had earned a bachelor's degree in French from Pacific University in Forest Grove and was living with her mom while working as a receptionist for Adidas America.

Over the next 14 years, she worked her way up in the corporation, from managing data to managing apparel to outfitting athletes.

She traveled widely to choose apparel designs for athletes and teams, including trips to Sydney in 2000 and to Athens, Greece, in 2004 to outfit U.S. competitors in the Olympic Games.

She left Adidas last November to outfit teams for Brand Athletics, a sports apparel company in Tigard.

She rents out a condominium that she owns and lives in a house that she's buying in North Portland. Baker, who has remained single, says her career has been demanding but rewarding.

"For someone who never knew what she wanted to do," she says, "I have been gifted beyond the imagination."

Stable work -- finally

Jonathan Heiden considers himself fortunate, too, especially given how he struggled with authority at Milwaukie High, where he was kicked out twice, and had his first daughter five years out of high school.

In those early years, he bounced among jobs, from a pizza restaurant to a grocery store warehouse to an airline catering service. He finally got some traction working for a printer, but he lost that job when business plummeted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then, about eight years ago, he got a job driving trucks for a Gresham waste management company. "It is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resilient," he says. "We are Americans. We generate trash."

He lives in Battle Ground, Wash., with his wife and three children in a home they bought 10 years ago.

"For the way I came out of high school," Heiden says, "I did really great."

As might be expected, last week's reunion also drew class members who have built remarkable careers after bolting out of the starting gate after high school commencement.

Shannon Kmetic, who was completing her second year of law school when The Oregonian caught up with her five years out of high school, is a Clackamas County prosecutor and founder of a nonprofit helping children affected by neglect or abuse called Angels in the Outfield.

Michael Juhala may have traveled the farthest to last week's reunion. He earned a college degree, played American-style football for a year in Europe and married an Austrian woman. They have two boys and live in Frankfurt, Germany, where Juhala runs the European operations of a staffing and consulting business. The 6-foot-6-inch former athlete hopes to return to Portland in a few years and establish a nonprofit to pay public school sports fees for low-income students.

Nathan Gamble, a Milwaukie valedictorian and student president at Oregon State University, worked 10 years for Cyber Dialogue, an Internet company based in New York City. He then earned an advanced degree at Stanford University and went to work for Yahoo, which he recently left to join a small startup company that rents textbooks to students. He lives in San Francisco.